Abstract
Democracy is shown to be a non-instrumental good-in-itself (as well as an instrument in securing other goods) by extrapolation from the Aristotelian premise that humans are political animals. Because humans are by nature language-using, as well as sociable and common-end-seeking beings, the capacity to associate in public decisions is constitutive of the human being-kind. Association in decision is necessary (although insufficient) for happiness in the sense of eudaimonia. A benevolent dictator who satisfied all other conditions of justice, harms her subjects by denying them opportunity to associate in the decisions by which their community is governed.
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Notes
If asked whether democracy actually had instrumental or non-instrumental value, Plato would have answered “no” on both counts. I believe that Aristotle would have answered with a qualified “yes”—qualified, in that he believed that most or perhaps all existing democracies were deficient as instruments and as ends; see further Ober (1998). Policy implications: Zakaria (1997) with response in Ober (2000), and below, Sect. 3.
By constitutive, I mean “playing a primary role in making a thing what it is.” Although natural capacities presumably have genetic origins, I am concerned with what is constitutive in a morally relevant sense, rather than in a genetic sense. I do not mean to limit human constitutive capacities to reason, love, and democracy; nor do I argue here for the constitutive status of the capacities for reason and love; I bring up reason and love to indicate that the capacity to associate in decision should be seen as a member of a fairly small set of morally relevant and distinctively human constitutive capacities, each one of which has non-instrumental and fundamental value for us as human beings.
Politics 1253a: “From these things it is clear that the polis is a natural phenomenon and that the human being (anthropos) is by nature a political animal (politikon zoion)...Moreover it is clear why the human is more political than any bee or other social animal. For nature, we assert, brings about nothing without purpose, and the human, alone among animals, possesses the faculty of language (logos)....Language is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and thus also the just and the unjust. It is in this respect that the human is distinguished from the other animals; only the human has a sense of good and evil, just and unjust, and the other moral sensibilities. And it is a partnership in these [sensibilities] that creates the household and the city–state.” I am not concerned here with intrinsic value as something which is “simply good” in a way that is detachable from that which is good for anyone; and so I am not in dialogue with G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, or other philosophers of intrinsic value as “non-relatively good.” Rather, with Aristotle and other ancient ethical philosophers, I am concerned with things that are good for someone, or more particularly, good for human beings as such. On Aristotle’s eudaimonism and his conception of politics, including detailed discussions of the issues of political virtue, deliberative faculties, exclusivity, and ruling and being ruled in turns see Ober (1998), chapter 6, and especially Kraut (2002).
On inclusivism, see Kraut (1989), pp. 3–9. Kraut argues that Aristotle is not an inclusivist, but as other scholars of Aristotle have argued that he was, it seems reasonable to include it as a possible type of Aristotelianism, leaving aside the question of Aristotle’s own views.
For a liberal-leaning Aristotelian, the minimum duty of permission arises from inclusivism: Since happiness as the human good cannot be reduced to a single condition, and may include optional as well as necessary goods, people must be permitted to pursue optional goods, at least to the extent that their pursuit is not harmful.
Readers not familiar with cat behavior are referred to the character Tigger in Milne (1928). Tigger is tabula rasa in that he is (initially) ignorant of his own preferences (in food) and of his abilities (in respect to climbing and so on). Yet his fundamental nature is indelibly and charmingly expressed by an irrepressible tendency to “bounce”—that is pounce upon others as a form of happiness-producing play. Being bounced is not always happiness-producing for those who are pounced upon so the other characters at one point to seek (unsuccessfully) to “unbounce Tigger.” This deceptively simple children’s story addresses an array of moral questions.
Animals other than cats (e.g. jumping spiders and velociraptors, the quick-moving predatory dinosaurs made famous by the Jurassic Park movies) also pounce and pouncing may be constitutive of these other animals’ being-kind and thus necessary to their complete happiness (albeit I find spider happiness and verlociraptor happiness harder to imagine than cat happiness). We could presumably develop a set of capacities that is uniquely constitutive of catness, but species identification is not the issue here.
For their invaluable comments on various drafts of this paper, I am indebted to Brad Inwood, Nan and Bob Keohane, Richard Kraut, Angelika Krebs, Susan Lape, Adrienne Mayor, Philip Pettit, and Debra Satz. Special thanks are due to Chris Bobonich for prodding me to write this paper and for suggesting the example of cat behavior, and to Brook Manville for challenging me to define the relationship between participatory democracy and the human good.
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Ober, J. Natural capacities and democracy as a good-in-itself. Philos Stud 132, 59–73 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9053-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9053-0